Malcolm Murray: we need to end the plague of locusts at Ibrox

[ian1964 10,370]

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/h...ibrox.22647991

 

FORMER Rangers chairman Malcolm Murray has called on new Ibrox chief David Somers to ensure democracy at next month's crunch annual general meeting.

 

The chartered accountant and investment manager was appointed acting chairman of Rangers International Football Club plc last week and will oversee what is likely to be a stormy shareholder summit on December 19.

 

Mr Murray, former Blue Knights leader Paul Murray and businessmen Alex Wilson and Scott Murdoch are bidding to win seats on the Ibrox board.

 

They have the backing of fans after high-profile protests by supporters in recent weeks.

 

Malcolm Murray said: "The worries [the fans have] are very valid but there is light at the end of the tunnel. The penny has dropped.

 

"As a leading fan said to me this morning, it is as though a plague of locusts have descended on Ibrox in the last five years and they won't leave until they have picked all the flesh off us.

 

"We won't allow that to happen, we can't.

 

"The only ones that leave are the ones that go through the revolving doors with a very large cheque. That has got to stop.

 

"That is why the AGM exists. We have got to hope that the new chairman is totally independent and will make sure that we have democracy to get that done.

 

"The fans need the money put back in the club, that is not where it is going. We will make sure that happens in the future, when we win at the AGM."

 

Rangers fans kept up the pressure on the current Ibrox hierarchy with a demonstration ahead of the team's Scottish League One victory over Airdrieonians on Saturday.

[calscot 0]

With Rangers' wage bill now running at 93.7% of turnover there is definitely far too much money being leached out the door and the club cannot be sustainable. In any other club you’d expect most of that wage burden to be spent on the players but at Rangers that was actually only £7.8m out of £17.9 and at a very reasonable 40.8% of turnover. This has reputedly actually dropped to around £6 despite significantly enhancing the squad with a massive difference in results as the reward.

 

 

So looking at the player spend there does not seem too much fat to trim for a club with a huge following, without giving very poor value for money to the fans, most of whom do not want the club to become an ordinary side by reducing the budget of the squad from about two or three times as much as a middling Scottish Premiership team to something similar or less. Not while the club are attracting 4 to 10 times as many fans in through the gates. Besides the blue pound doesn't stretch as far as other clubs, with agents sniffing our far larger store of resources than less popular peers.

 

 

The problem with tinkering with the wages of the players is that you tend to provide a proportional product and if the quality and results drops dramatically, the “customer” loyalty will start to take a battering. And when you look at the figures, even bringing in an amateur squad like Queens Park will still have our wages running at 52.4%, which with the widespread target of less than 50% making that look ridiculous.

 

So it seems we should start by looking elsewhere for savings and you have to wonder what we are paying our executives so many millions for while giving them severance packages after being found unfit for their job in just a few months, that your ordinary worker would never get a sniff of. When you combine that with the ludicrously poor financial figures where the money generated outside the IPO and ticket sales would struggle to pay the executive wages, you have to wonder what planet they are on.

 

 

Surely, a club like Rangers even when at its peak in today’s population based income, is not a money generating monster of the likes of top English sides, has to treat the running of the club more like that of a non-profit charity which wants maximum income without squandering it by overly rewarding those that bring the money in. That becomes more necessary when the club is recovering from a crippling illness and with just a glance at the figures, struggling to make ends meet in a cash starved environment.

 

You really have to wonder what these executives are doing to deserve their ludicrous wages with totally illogical payoffs during what would normally be a probationary period for most jobs, that shackle the club even more.

 

 

You can understand what a top player brings for the money and you can see that he will receive similar remuneration at any clubs he ends up at, and you know that the team will struggle for results if you don’t pay the going rate. But where is the comparison for the board and CEO? Are they really bringing in the same kind of results as the team compared to lesser paid opposition? To me it’s like paying through the nose for unknown players who don’t perform and put you in the relegation zone.

 

 

Surely we would be able to attract some savvy, hardworking business types with impeccable references and integrity with a salary of say £150k a year? Most board members should be there because they want to, they should be making their money from their businesses and at worst using a club like Rangers to raise their profile or as some kind of trophy position for their outside success. They really shouldn't need a huge wage for whatever paltry hours a month they actually do for that position.

 

In my perhaps naïve viewpoint as someone who gets by quite comfortably on a more normal salary, I can’t see why the club executive should be draining the budget by more than about £500k. As I said, I think we should be looking at more of a charity model.

 

 

After that we can look at whether the rest of the staffing is at an appropriate level for our income. Aberdeen’s full staff cost is about £5.3m, including the players so you have to wonder why ours is around £10m excluding the squad. Once you trim a couple of million off the executive salaries, it still looks overly high when you’d expect some economy of scale for looking after a stadium that is just two and half times the capacity of Pittodrie and a training ground that is mostly one building and bunch of football pitches, and how much better is the latter compared to some top SPL sides?

 

There are a lot of people pointing fingers at our playing squad but for me, that is the one place we seem to be getting somewhat reasonable value for money, it's cronyism at the top that first needs to be excised, and people brought in who actually perform the job for wage befitting the market sector and able to bring in a lot more income than the current few million outside of ticket sales.

[andy steel 0]

Absolutely right, great read from Calscot.

 

It is for the reasons you list above that I am certain the people running the club are not fans of Rangers and are, in fact, their mortal enemies.

[der Berliner 3,209]

With Rangers' wage bill now running at 93.7% of turnover there is definitely far too much money being leached out the door and the club cannot be sustainable. In any other club you’d expect most of that wage burden to be spent on the players but at Rangers that was actually only £7.8m out of £17.9 and at a very reasonable 40.8% of turnover. This has reputedly actually dropped to around £6 despite significantly enhancing the squad with a massive difference in results as the reward.

 

A "running" 93,7%? Where does that figure come from? (Just asking.)

[calscot 0]

A "running" 93,7%? Where does that figure come from? (Just asking.)

 

I hope I have my numbers right but happy to be corrected. From what I read in the accounts our income was £19.1m and our wage bill was £17.9m. There is the 13 month anomaly which I'm not sure if it applies to both numbers.

[Zappa 0]

Surely we would be able to attract some savvy, hardworking business types with impeccable references and integrity with a salary of say £150k a year? Most board members should be there because they want to, they should be making their money from their businesses and at worst using a club like Rangers to raise their profile or as some kind of trophy position for their outside success. They really shouldn't need a huge wage for whatever paltry hours a month they actually do for that position.

 

Absolutely. Other big companies (and football clubs) might be able to afford to pay their executives completely ridiculous remuneration, but there's absolutely no way our club should be paying out several million every year in executive salaries, bonuses & pay-offs like what's been happening over the past year or two. The gravy train culture has got to stop at Ibrox and nobody should be exempt from scrutiny.

[D'Artagnan 173]

I wonder how much MM's popularity has soared following Spiers negative tweets about him ?

[der Berliner 3,209]

I hope I have my numbers right but happy to be corrected. From what I read in the accounts our income was £19.1m and our wage bill was £17.9m. There is the 13 month anomaly which I'm not sure if it applies to both numbers.

 

Fair enough and much as I thought. Still, I do wonder whether we have a "running wage bill" of that amount right now. I might be wrong, but it was mentioned that even right now we do get money in from season tickets and the sponsorship deals, money that goes against the wage bill et al.

[amms 0]

Malcolm Murray was on BBC Radio Scotland tonight (black marks for him appearing on it and for me listening to it...) and he spoke well. He doesn't believe Whyte has any official involvement with the club and was told Blue Pitch are a group 'wealthy Arabs' who don't want publicity and fronted the initial money to Green.

 

He said his issues are a total lack of corporate governance at the club. He doesn't believe the Easedales are running the club, he believes they are acting for another.

He was asked directly if we could go into administration again and he said he believes so. His concerns surround the payouts made to our recently departed staff. We were told we'd have a million left by April, he thinks a large chunk of that has now gone too.

[the gunslinger 3,366]

i think it's pretty clear our finances are precarious. we will probably be fine but any kind of big bill will see us in bother or a change to income projections.

 

january may well see player sales.